Jonathan Baumbach - You, or the Invention of Memory

And then of course, for no reason I can understand, the thing I have been denying (or at least feeling privately innocent about), becomes, if I am to continue to see myself as an honorable person, undeniable. I say “for no reason I can understand” because I have not been attracted to Elizabeth, at least not insofar as I understand my feelings. And still it happens, the thing we’d been denying, and happens again. Elizabeth had knocked on my study door while I was working, something I’d asked her not to do, and then entered soundlessly before I had a chance to say “I’m busy” or “Come in,” whichever came first to mind. “I want to say something to you,” she said in a barely audible voice, which seemed to merge with the text I was working on. “Yes?” without turning around. “I’ll come back when you’re less busy. You’ve been so kind to me the last thing I want to be is a nuisance. You’ve probably been saying to yourself when is this person going to leave.” By this point her aggressive self-effacement is beginning to wear on me. “Well …” I say. “It’s true, isn’t it?” she says. “You’ve hated having me here and you’ve been too discreet or whatever to let me know. At the very least, you ought to let me make it up to you. It will make me feel better.” I thought she was going to suggest, as she had several times before, treating me to dinner or something of the kind and so I say, making light of her earnestness, “Anything that makes you feel better will make me feel better.” And what could I have possibly meant by that. Inevitably, she misconstrues my remark — we misread each other and ourselves — isn’t that the nature of misunderstanding — every step of the way. And that’s the way the neurasthenic Elizabeth and I end up in bed together, each doing the other a presumed kindness neither wants nor appreciates.

I hurry after you while trying if possible to avoid police attention and think I see you a block or so away at the back edge of a group, marching under the banner DANCERS AGAINST WAR. It’s not at all clear to me why some people are being arrested and others ignored. Even as I hurry toward you a van passes and I can see that the back is dense with protesters pressed against one another like a rush-hour subway car. And then, to my surprise, I see you running toward me and I increase my pace and we meet midstreet and embrace as if months had passed and not minutes since our last meeting. “We can leave,” she says, “if you want. It was important to me that you came to get me.” We walk off with our arms around each other, each carrying the plastic bag with our antique clothing store purchase in our other hand.

“It’s nothing,” you say in answer to the question I haven’t yet asked. I stare at the shadow, perched in your armchair, trying in the dark to decipher who or what it is. Its continued silence seems to me ominous. “Would you turn on the light?” I ask, wondering at the same time whether that’s the choice I really want to make. You hesitate. “It’s very bright,” you say. “You’ll have to shut your eyes before I turn it on.” I am reluctant to shut my eyes, so I offer to look away instead, which makes you laugh. “Just shut your eyes,” you say. “It’s no big deal. As soon as the light is on you can open them again.”

Once the affair starts it has its own disconcerting momentum. It isn’t that we’re in love or even particularly affectionate with one another. It’s just that the sex — the fucking — takes on an urgency neither of us seems able to resist, which makes getting anything else done virtually impossible. Since I work at home and Elizabeth has no job, the opportunity for sex is virtually endless. After the first encounter, Elizabeth moves into my room with my unacknowledged, perhaps grudging consent. The odd thing is, in that period between encounters — those increasingly rare moments when we aren’t going at it — I long to have my apartment to myself again. But those feelings pass when she comes into my study and holds out her hand and says, somewhat shyly, “Do you mind…?” And then of course when I acknowledge to Roger that something is going on between us, he seems skeptical of my confession, says “Well, you said there wasn’t anything going on and I took you at your word and where did that get me? Why should I believe you now?”

A cab drifts by and I hail it and we both get in. When the driver says where to, we both almost simultaneously, announce the address of the other’s place. And then we look at each other and giggle foolishly. In any event, the driver takes off without further instructions and I wonder — I suppose we both do — which of the two addresses he has been given he has decided on. You whisper something to me that I can’t quite decipher and we kiss, and we kiss, the kind of public behavior I find hateful in others. I let the moment take me where it will until self-consciousness sets in, and I become frightened, anxious perhaps, not at where things might go but where perhaps they might not.

Elizabeth is out, looking for a place to live — she is actually considering putting a deposit on an apartment she saw yesterday — when you call. The talk recedes from small to smaller to smallest and then, without preliminary, you ask if I could meet you for a late lunch today. “How late?” I ask, though it is not a matter of when for me but whether. “Twoish,” you say. When I hesitate you say, “It may be difficult for me to get away from work. Maybe we ought to make this date for tomorrow or for some time next week.” “Is there something particular you want to discuss?” I ask. “Not really,” you say. “I do want you to know how happy it makes me to hear that you’ve been happy. You have been happy, haven’t you? That’s the word on the street.”

The cab lets us off in front of your building and I trail you to the door. You don’t ask whether I’d like to come in but the offer seems implicit so I follow you to the elevator and, after a mostly silent trip where we stand apart not quite looking at one another as if recreating our earliest beginnings, into your apartment which seems on its best behavior as if company were expected. “What can I get you?” you ask. “What are you offering?” I say. And that’s when you come over and wrap your arms around me, punctuated by a sigh of exhaustion, and I wonder, not willing to ask, if that’s your best offer.

I am assessing my feelings about Elizabeth’s relocation — how much do I really mind? I miss her but I’m also glad to have my place to myself — when the doorbell rings unexpectedly. My imagination of possibilities doesn’t extend any further than Elizabeth’s return, for which I already have a predetermined response. So when you of all people appear looking like something out of one of my erotic fantasies in a long-skirted, apple-green summer dress, I am not so much disappointed as unmoored. “I called first,” you say. “I tried to reach you but your line was either busy or something wrong with your phone.” What else can I do but invite you in. “I can’t stay,” you announce as you step beyond the threshold, which I immediately translate into, Don’t expect me to jump into your bed . “Where’s Lizzy?” you ask. My answer is to glance behind me and offer empty hands. “I can see that she’s not behind you,” you say, which creates a momentary breach in the good feeling between us. “She’s taken her own apartment,” I say, which you no doubt know or you wouldn’t have shown up as you have. “What a coincidence,” you say. “Roger is moving out of my place as we speak.”

It is as though someone or something rushes by me as the light goes on. When I adjust my eyes to the glare — for an extended moment I see only dots — we are alone in the room, an unaccountable salty smell in the air. You invite me to sit on the edge of the bed, mentioning only once and in an offhand way that intercourse after a D&C is out of the question for at least three weeks. “What can I do to make things up to you?” you ask, offering from under the covers a pale hand like a found object. “I’ll take a rain check,” I say, lying down next to you. “Forget it,” you say. “This offer is only good until daylight.”